
- This event has passed.
TextileX Conversation Series with Jovencio de la Paz and Sonja Dahl
October 27, 2021 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm PDT
In Conversation: Jovencio de la Paz and Sonja Dahl.

The TextileX Conversation Series brings together two contemporary textile artists to discuss their work and practices in relation to the theme of New Traditions. New Traditions begs the question: In these rapidly changing times, what do we preserve and build upon and what do we rethink and rebuild anew? These conversations ask participating artists and audiences how they can transform their textile practices to serve a more inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and connected purpose. In this week’s conversation, artist, weaver, and educator Jovencio de la Paz is joined by artist, writer, and lecturer of contemporary art Sonja Dahl.
Sonja Dahl is an artist, writer and lecturer of contemporary art at the University of Oregon. Her work critically explores the cultural, historic, metaphoric and embodied aspects of how textile processes such as indigo dyeing, whitework embroidery and patchwork quilting live within and reflect the values of human societies. She conducts her research and art making from a situated acknowledgement and critical engagement with her white, American, settler identity. She is a founding member of Craft Mystery Cult, a member of Ditch Projects artist-run space in Springfield, OR, and a continuing collaborator with Babaran Segaragunung Culture House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Her arts research projects and subsequent collaborations in Indonesia (2012 – ongoing) are supported by the Fulbright Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council. Sonja’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and her writing is published in peer-reviewed journals and printed and online arts publications.
Jovencio de la Paz is an artist, weaver, and educator. Their current work explores the intersecting histories of weaving and modern computers. Rhyming across millenia, the stories of weaving and computation unfold as a space of speculation. Trained in traditional processes of weaving, dye, and stitch-work, but reveling in the complexities and contradictions of digital culture, de la Paz works to find relationships between concerns of language, embodiment, pattern, and code with broad concerns of ancient technology, speculative futures, and the phenomenon of emergence. Jovencio is currently Assistant Professor and Curricular Head of Fibers at the University of Oregon.
Jovencio de la Paz received a Master of Fine Art in Fibers from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (2012) and a Bachelor of Fine Art with an emphasis on Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008). They have exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI; R & Company Gallery in New York, NY; Vacation Gallery in New York, NY; The 2019 Portland Biennial at Disjecta in Portland, OR; The Museum of Craft and Folk-art in Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO; Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea; Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR; The Art Gym, Marylhusrt, OR; ThreeWalls, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Uri Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, among others. Jovencio regularly teaches at schools of art, craft, and design throughout the country, such as the Ox Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, Michigan, the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine, and the Arrowmont School of Craft in Tennessee, and is also a co-founder of the collaborative group Craft Mystery Cult, established in 2010.
This conversation is presented in partnership with the MFA in Applied Craft + Design.